


Playing Through

by corneroffandom



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corneroffandom/pseuds/corneroffandom
Summary: Elias expects to spend Christmas alone this year, which is fine with him, considering everything, but someone has other ideas for him.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Secret Santa 2020





	Playing Through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatBohoFemme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatBohoFemme/gifts).



> A/N: Merry Christmas, ThatBohoFemme, I hope you like this!

It's a chilly December day, for Florida. Elias sits against a wall, mindlessly tuning his guitar. His fingers are still twitchy from the electrocution a couple weeks back, and it makes strumming difficult. Every missed chord or wrong note grinds at him, leaves him feeling worthless and shaky. At yet another off beat in the song he's trying to sort out in his head, he grits his teeth and considers throwing all of his musical instruments away, as yet just another casualty of Jeff Hardy messing around in his life. But he closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall, breathing in and out deeply.

He's still slumped there, guitar sprawled over his knees, when he feels a light kick against his shoe. He grunts and opens his eyes to find Bayley hovering there, frowning down at him, her arms crossed over her chest. "Hey."

He stirs and sits up, glowering at her. "What do you want?" He's not in the mood to deal with anyone, but she seems to understand. Instead of just walking off to leave him to stew in his own failures, however, she settles in next to him and they sit side by side, staring off into the shadows, and he wonders if she's reflecting quietly on all of the things they've been going through lately like he is.

"There's a Christmas party going on down the hall," she says after a few moments.

He exhales gruffly, having spent the last ten minutes trying to block all of the rambunctious noise coming from that general area out with his subpar playing, only succeeding in growing frustrated the more his hands refuse to do what he wants. "And?"

"And everyone's in there eating, drinking, and being merry while you and I are out here." She shoots him a quiet, searching glance but he doesn't return it, keeping his face passive as he looks straight ahead.

"I prefer it out here," he mumbles, ignoring how his fingers tremble and twitch as he presses them against his jeans. "Only people in there are those who are willing to run you down with a car, then ignore you for months afterwards, leaving you to..." His words fail him, he clenches his fist together and feels another pained jolt work through his fingers, stronger than before. "Shit."

She notices, of course she does. Bayley, always too observant for her own good. "You've had a pretty bad year," she notes quietly, gingerly reaching over to touch him, and it's the most contact he's had with another human outside of wrestling (or being nursed back to health after waking up disoriented and confused in a hospital bed, voices echoing around him saying something about hit and run, and Jeff Hardy and triceps tear...) He loathes and yearns for it in kind, his emotions all over the place as her fingers ease up his, somehow soothing the tremors that have assailed him since that damned Symphony of Destruction match. For a wild, brief moment, he considers tangling his fingers in hers just to hold onto this feeling.

Their eyes meet and she smiles, a little, eyebrow quirking as she examines him. "I think we all have," he finally mutters. "To varying degrees."

"This is true," she says, looking down at her empty shoulders which used to carry the weight and responsibility of a title belt, before... She sighs. "Very true. But falling off of a balcony, getting run over by a car and electrocuted within the same calendar year is pretty high up there."

He smirks tiredly. "You know me, can't do anything half way."

She laughs a little at this, turning to stare at him. "You know what I think?"

"What?" he asks, almost dreading her answer but finding that in the end, his curiosity wins out.

"I think you and I should see this as a new beginning," she says, clapping her hands together briskly. "No more Jeff Hardy, no more Sasha Banks, nothing can hold us back now, we just have ourselves, and nothing else. We have a lot of work to do, you and I, but we'll figure it out. What do you say?" And she's there, holding her hand out towards him once more, pinky extended, and it's so ridiculous, almost childish, but he wants it so bad, to just find a new goal, build towards something that felt as incredible as playing songs off of Universal Truth had all of those weeks ago before Jeff had ruined that too.

"I say I like the way you think," he says, meeting her halfway and, with a fair amount of focus to keep the tremors somewhat at bay, curling his little finger around hers.

When she pulls her hand free, he almost shudders at the loss of human contact, but then blinks when she reaches out for him. "Come on, I still want to check that party out."

It's tempting to scoff at her, tell her to go on her own, but he's still feeling surprisingly warm by their pinky swear to each other, so he obliges her, reaches out and takes her hand, even allows her to drag him to his feet, pushing him down the hall to where the lights and music are originating from.

There are a lot of people here, and he blinks hard for a moment, always thrown by just how many are involved in WWE at any one time-- wrestlers aside, there are technicians for the show, sound people, those in charge of the lights, the cameras, directors, producers, interns, so many various people from so many different areas in the company, it's ridiculous to really see a scope of it all. He glances around, trying to find someone he recognizes, and comes up short, so he shrugs and heads over for the snack table, not surprised to find Bayley tagging along. "Are you going to be my shadow all night?" he wonders, a trifle impatiently. Despite earlier, sometimes he does just want time alone, especially when the spoon he's holding to serve himself shakes and trembles in the palm of his hand.

"Yep," she says cheerfully, and he groans out a sigh that makes her toss her head back and laugh. 

It's a PPV night so there are people from both brands here, all watching TLC or waiting for their matches to go on. Elias has a segment on the preshow, or else he'd be at home, mulling the Universal Truth, and maybe working on his next album to tear through iTunes with again. Instead, he's here, listening to staticky versions of generic Christmas tunes coming from a stereo balanced precariously in the corner. He hates it, and how even trying to drown it out with more handfuls of finger foods from the food table does nothing to limit the ear-grating noises.

Bayley is still at his elbow when he twists around and glowers at the stereo, marching over to it with determination. "Elias--" she exclaims, trying to talk sense into him, but he's already at it, not even bothering to hit the thing, or lift it up and throw it, no, he simply grabs the electric cord and tugs it out of the wall so angrily she's surprised the outlet doesn't just come tearing out of the plaster. 

He looks proud of himself as the music dies abruptly, sneer growing when the superstars barely seem to notice, too lost in their own conversations or eating or whatever it is that they're all doing. Bayley taps her fingers against her forearm, gazing at him, and he huffs. "What? That music was disgusting."

"Sure, but now there's nothing festive to listen to," she huffs.

He rolls his eyes, not too concerned with it... until an idea crosses his mind and he bites his lip, glancing down at the guitar case still hanging off of his shoulder. Gingerly laying it down away from the most of the madness, he tugs his guitar out and leans back into the corner of the room, pointedly ignoring everyone as he picks out a familiar tune-- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. It's simple, and easy to pluck out, he's been playing it for years for family get togethers, so he's confident in his abilities to play it better than that old ass stereo could ever hope to, even with his recent issues.

What he doesn't expect, once he's done, is to look up to find a small group of wrestlers have ceased their chatter, and are now lingering around where he's set up, punch in hand, and a look of awe in their eyes. "Hey," one of the techs in the back calls out, and Elias recognizes him as the guy who'd helped set up his concert all of those weeks ago. When Elias waves him on, his shoulders straighten. "Can you-- I mean, would you mind playing Jingle Bells?"

Elias tilts his head and immediately sets in to playing it, tongue poking out between his teeth as he focuses on just the music, relaxing into its warm embrace. He can sense Bayley lingering next to him, watching, but he pays her little mind as more requests pour in-- someone even requests a song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which he snorts at but manages to play anyway, even though that's usually something he saves just for the children in his family.

He's not even sure really how long he sits there, cycling through one request to the next, but he realizes after awhile just how relaxed and happy he is, and damn, he hasn't felt this way since before the hit'n'run all of those months ago. He risks glancing up and finds the crowd around him has only grown, more and more people enjoying his playing. It's almost overwhelming. He awkwardly clears his throat and hunches back over the guitar. "One more song," he says, and this time, he plays his own favorite-- Blue Christmas. It's kind of a slow, yearning song to finish things off with, but it suits him, he thinks, and he plucks out the notes carefully, his eyes sliding closed as the song drifts on towards its end.

When he finishes, and he slowly puts the guitar back in its case, clicking it shut, he expects silence, the soft shuffle of the wrestlers returning to their snack table, and their conversations, as if nothing had ever happened. What he doesn't expect, however, is the first smattering of applause, off in the group of people beginning out of sight, that slowly grows until almost everyone standing before him are clapping, or stomping their feet, or something to show their appreciation of his playing for them. His eyes shift to the clock overhead and he's amazed to find close to an hour had passed in that fashion.

"Wow," he mutters, in awe of both how long he'd lost himself in the melodies, and how appreciative the others are responding to it all, which has proven to be a rarity for him since joining this company. He then realizes his tremors hadn't been much of a problem that entire hour, the music flowing on despite his ruined fingers.

Bayley is still standing there, he realizes, and she smirks at him. "Wow indeed. You've been holding out on us, sir."

"No, not really," he says quietly, hoisting his case up once more and following her through the crowd of people, some clapping him on the arm. It should rankle at him, he thinks, how they notice him now, how they care now, and not when he was laying on the asphalt bleeding, or when he could barely breathe for how on fire each nerve in his body felt after getting electrocuted to the point he thought he was hallucinating at times, but he shakes these hateful thoughts away, deciding to acknowledge them some other day. For now, Bayley is dragging him back to the snacks table, and Elias--

Elias wants to stay, for the first time in a long time, wants to eat handfuls of lame appetizers and watch their ridiculous, idiotic co-workers and mock them with her, and so he puts his guitar down where he figures it'll be safest, and he does just that.


End file.
